Dove Season
by RJ Lewis the III
Summary: She wanted to keep living but wasn't looking for a reason to live. After meeting the prison group, Ruth Collins finds herself with more than one. S04 AUish. Very eventual Daryl/OC. Rated for lang and mature adult content.
1. chapter one

**DOVE SEASON**  
chapter one

* * *

It happened so fast that she wasn't even sure it really _did_ happened. You started to see things this far in, started to fear the noises at night, doubted the safety of wherever you were hiding. It wouldn't be surprising to her if this was all just a terrible, horrific dream. A nightmare. That's what was happening right in front of her, what was happening in the second that her brain pressed the pause button and everything stopped.

She knew that it was happening right in front of her, that Karen was dying two feet from her, and that she needed to move before she was right there next to her. But her feet didn't run, her finger didn't pull the trigger, and her brain didn't understand what was happening. Karen screamed for her, begged her to end her suffering, begged to be killed by her rather than by some corpse, but she couldn't move. Her body was frozen, her head pounding, her ears ringing. This couldn't be happening.

_How could this be happening? _

They had been so careful, so aware, so mistrusting. They had stayed off the roads, avoided heavily populated areas, and had kept to themselves. In the beginning they had debated finding others and of the likelihood that any of their family members had survived. They had tried to reach their parents in the suburbs but had given up after trying to go through Atlanta, which had become a breeding ground for walkers.

After a few months of looking for them as they traveled, Karen had been the one to finally suggest they accept that they were alone and to give up their half-hearted search. She hadn't argued because she couldn't bring herself to disagree. Too much time had passed. Their parents were survivors just as much as they were, she had faith in that, but there was no way of knowing anymore where they could be holed up. If they were alive, she just hoped that they were safe and continued to stay that way. If they were dead, well, Ruth prayed that it had been quick.

There was no way around running into other survivors, but the sisters had done their best to move along quickly, never staying long enough to become attached or held back. It had been key to their survival – _them against the world_; it had saved their lives more times than either could count.

But this was not one of those times.

No, it had finally happened.

The ravaged world around her had finally taken the only thing that she had left. It might as well have taken her – what else did she have left now? The world had taken them hostage months ago and only released people into the welcoming arms of Death. No one had control of their life anymore, that luxury left the moment that the first walker reanimated. Now people were forced to live moment to moment hoping that they had made the right choices, taken the right precautions, hoping that they would be survive another night. Hoping that the morning would bring another sunrise for them.

It all came rushing back like a wave breaking against the rocks. Her knees grew weak as the screams quieted and the only noise she heard was the ringing in her head. Faintly she could hear the walker continue to digest her sister but it didn't process in her brain. This wasn't really happening, it couldn't.

One second she was holding her hand, screaming as what was left of the gas station attendant ripped into her neck, and the next moment, Karen was gone. Empty space. She could feel the place where her hand had just been in hers and looked down to see it slick with blood. Karen's blood. Her sister's blood.

It didn't feel real.

How could it be real if it didn't feel real?

* * *

A supply run.

An easy in and out, a walk in the park. That's what Ruth had said that morning while trying to rally her sister to join her for a run to a grocery store she had spotted the day before. It looked to be fortified by a previous army battalion that had been posted outside it, rationing the supplies in to survivors in the early days of the outbreak. Ruth had been surprised by the lack of walkers around the store but hadn't trusted her ability to handle trouble if she ran into it inside and had decided to come back the next day with Karen. It took a little coercing on the younger sister's part, but finally Karen had agreed to join her, if only to ensure that Ruth would return safely.

It had been Ruth's idea to go. They needed the supplies more than either sister cared to admit and this was an easy solution. Both had a list of separate supplies and would meet back at the registers in twenty minutes. It was an easy run. It was supposed to be an easy run. She'd scouted the building once more the night before, counting only a dozen or so walkers casting shadows through the store windows. They could handle a dozen walkers. If it had not been for the door leading to the back rooms breaking down, releasing a swarm of walkers that she couldn't have known were there.

Had that been for nothing? It had to be, if this was Karen's fate. They did something wrong, took a wrong turn, made a bad judgment call. Went left instead of right. It was the only explanation. It was the only thing that made it all make sense. They had just gotten lost on the path like so many before them. People who forget die. And Karen had forgotten. They both had.

They had survived for so long that Ruth had almost forgotten that they could die. She forgot that the world didn't want them anymore. She forgot that they weren't meant to survive, that they couldn't. Humanity wasn't meant to occupy the earth anymore, Mother Nature had made that painfully obvious. They weren't meant to be here anymore. Their cities didn't want them, their homes couldn't protect them. There was nothing but death for humanity now and finally, it had found them.

She couldn't handle the idea of it being solely her fault for this happening. But Karen knew the risks, knew the dangers of living in a devastated world filled with the walking dead. She knew that by getting up in the morning she was accepting the possibility that she could die at any moment. They both did every morning and considered themselves blessed every night when they went to sleep. They had survived another day. Tomorrow it would begin all over again, but at least they had made it for just one more day. It was enough for them.

* * *

Karen had been the one to find her when the televisions stopped broadcasting and people were panicking in the streets. She had left her Jeep running in front of Ruth's house and had come in announcing that they were leaving in twenty minutes. Grabbing everything that they could carry, they loaded supplies into the back of her Jeep and had taken off into the night. Neither of them talked much, both too caught up in their own thoughts.

Three hours into their drive they passed a burning church that had flaming walkers stumbling out of its front doors. Ruth looked away from the horrifying scene and focused back at the map in front of her, trying to determine their current route. The radio was playing an emergency broadcast that was telling people to head for Fort Benning, outside of Atlanta. Her sister had watched in the rear view mirrors until the church disappeared from view and both pretended not notice her tears.

When Karen finally pulled the Jeep off the side of the road and parked it behind a small group of trees, Ruth had almost fallen asleep. She had awoke to the jerk of the Jeep coming to a full stop and blearily looked around them, confused by their location.

"Keeps us hidden from the road," Karen had explained. "Don't know what to expect in times like these. Better safe than sorry, right?"

Ruth had only shrugged in agreement before pulling a blanket out of her backpack, throwing it over herself before settling deeper into her seat. That first night she didn't have trouble falling asleep, didn't have the nightmares that kept her from falling asleep now.

If she had known then that in only a few short months Karen would be dead, she would have stayed awake and talked with her. She would have asked any and every question that she could think of, soak up all the knowledge that her sister had to share. Karen was seven years older than her and had always played the part of big sister perfectly. Even at twenty-nine, Ruth had still gone to her sister first about anything that had mattered before.

Boy problems had been Karen's forte while Ruth was in high-school. When it came to real-life decisions such as college, Karen had been the one with answers. Every memorable moment in her life and Karen had been there to celebrate with her. She could remember all the times that they had sat on her front porch, laughing and drinking glasses of blackberry wine. A happy married life they had rejoiced over. A job promotion had been worth an all-night girls' celebration at the bar. A string of failed pregnancies. A broken marriage.

It all seemed meaningless now.

If she had known then what she knew now, Ruth would have talked about anything. She just wanted to laugh with her one more time, to tell her how much she loved her, to see her sister smile just once more. She would give anything to have just one more second with her. She needed her. She couldn't leave her alone here. She couldn't go.

How could it be real if it didn't _feel_ real?

You cut off your hand and you feel pain. You have a brain tumor and even then you'll have physical symptoms. You have your heart ripped through an invisible string, tying you to the person you love most in the world, and _you don't feel it_. How fucked up is that? You can't feel that kind of pain, your brain can't process it, and your heart won't believe it. It doesn't feel real because it shouldn't ever be real. You shouldn't have to feel that much pain and your brain tries to protect itself by shutting down and your body takes over.

Shock, that's what it was.

She knew that was what was happening. Her brain couldn't handle the images that her eyes were sending it, so it pressed the emergency shut-down and cut power to everything but the essentials. Her mind had left the building, leaving behind only enough of herself to keep things running. It was just her now. Ruth was alone.

Her legs threatened to give out under her, her arms hung uselessly at her sides, her face was smeared with blood and tears. It couldn't be real, but it was. The sounds of Karen screaming pulled her to the present. Nothing had ever been more real in her entire life. The rest of her life paled in comparison to this moment.

She needed to move. She needed to go. Time was running short and she needed to get somewhere safe, somewhere that she could process everything in peace. She needed to get out of there. Her feet started to move, legs tensing to run. Karen's screams were drawing walkers to their location and already there were six more shambling up the street towards them. There wasn't any more time, she needed to go.

_Get your shit together, man. Ain't no place for crybabies anymore. Get your ass moving._

Her vision sharpened as reality crashed down around her and she was running to the fallen body of her sister. Her hands moved without having to think and the walker standing closest to her fell to the ground, bullet hole smoking in its forehead. Ruth kicked the walker off her sister with a scream, bringing her boot down hard on its cranium. Brains exploded onto the pavement as she grabbed Karen by the arm, dragging her behind her. She shot two more walkers that were getting too close before pulling her sister into a nearby alley.

It was too late, she knew that, but she had a promise to keep and not a lot of time left for it be fulfilled. Checking quickly around the corner for any impending danger, Ruth reloaded her clip before shoving it back on her .22 Remington. She took a deep breath and looked down at her sister, doing her best to keep her breathing even. She couldn't stop now.

It felt like she was swallowing nails as she took in her sister's appearance. The bloody broken body in front of her wasn't Karen, not anymore. The walker had taken a chuck out of her throat before moving down to her abdomen. He had ripped through her skin as easily as he had her shirt, leaving her whole front shredded and allowing for her intestines to spill out. The bile escaped Ruth before she could stop it and she was on her knees, vomiting at her sister's feet. As she caught her breath and wiped a dirty sleeve across her mouth, she saw Karen's foot twitch and felt like puking again.

There was an unspoken rule in this new world: if you've got any decency left, you put a bullet in a dying man's head. You don't let them become one of those things, not ever. You end their suffering and hope that when it's you on the ground someone will pay you the same kindness. Ruth had done it before, with people that had been attacked in their last group.

But that had been different, they were people that hardly more than an acquaintance. Karen wasn't some woman that she had only met after the outbreak, she was her sister. She was the yang to Ruth's yin, the person who understood her most of all, the one that was Ruth's only reason for living. And now she was just.. gone. Killing her wasn't the same as the others. Ruth couldn't let it be.

She couldn't stop the tears from falling as she lifted her pistol with a shaking hand. Karen's legs were moving now and Ruth could hear her start to growl, eyes bugging open as she looked for her nearest prey. Everything stopped. She didn't look as she pulled the trigger.

_I'm so sorry._

The heavy thud following the gun shot told her that the promise had been kept.

_I love you._

* * *

Black edged into her vision as the oxygen left her body. Her throat burned as she tried to catch her breath, doing her best to keep herself standing. Leaning heavily against the brick wall behind her, she put a shaking hand to her mouth, trying to muffle her sobs. Her other hand dropped the gun on the pavement as she held herself up. She wanted to puke but there was nothing left in her stomach. Her heart felt like it was going to break its way through her chest.

_Oh, god. Why?_

Moans forced her to look to the road and she felt her stomach drop. Eight more walkers were coming towards her, arms outstretched and mouths biting the air around them. There was never enough time to mourn the dead anymore. She looked at Karen one last time, trying to remember her before her head was caved in from a gunshot and her intestines were where they belonged.

There was a photo tucked in the breast pocket of her shirt, the only photo that she had left of them. It was a college graduation photo that they had taken over six years ago. The photo was from a low angle and slightly out of focus but it didn't matter. The two sisters had their arms wrapped around one another, both with arms stretched the sky, reaching for the graduation cap floating above their heads. Smiles took up their entire faces, and their happiness was evident in every way. It had been a candid shot that their father had taken by mistake while dropping his camera.

Ruth had hated the photo, it was a vivid reminder of the terrible hair cut that she'd had at the time, but Karen had loved the photo. She had tucked it under the frame of her vanity mirror and had claimed to look at it every day before the outbreak. She said that it had been one of her proudest moments, watching her baby sister take her first steps in real world and being able to share in that moment with her.

A few months ago, Karen had given her the photo before going out on a supply run. Ruth had been out for two days with a sprained ankle that was a result of her last attempted run that had gone sour. The two had been separated for the night since Ruth wasn't able to make it back to their camp before dark. When Karen had found her the next morning in the backseat of an SUV, the older woman was in tears.

"I thought that I'd lost you," she whispered, pulling her sister into a hug when Ruth climbed out of the vehicle.

Together they returned to their camp, Karen keeping her from tripping over the wooded terrain as they went. Nothing was said about the supplies that had been lost when Ruth was attacked. Karen had given her the photo before taking off in the Jeep, not giving Ruth enough time to question her decision. She had looked at the photo, confused to see which one it was and grimaced at her hair cut before putting it in her jacket pocket.

Looking down at the bloody mess in front of her, Ruth didn't recognize her sister any more. Pulling the photo out with a shaking hand, she held it up beside what was left of Karen, choking back more tears. She brought the photo to her lips and kissed it, looking at it with sorrow. With a shaky breath she returned the photo to its proper place and stood up. All she saw when she closed her eyes was the bloody scene before her and that was when Ruth knew it was time to go.

There was nothing left for her here.

* * *

She holstered her pistol at her hip as she stood up, pulling a knife off her belt as she did so. The walkers were easy to deal with, she kept herself with room to back up and filtered them through the alley, bringing her knife down on each of their skulls as they got closer. Soon she was the only one left in the alley and the moaning ceased. Kicking her way through the bodies, she ran to the end of the alley, glancing around the street quickly. A few stranglers were roaming a block down but otherwise it seemed to be clear.

Jogging back up the block, Ruth scooped up the second duffel full of supplies that Karen had been carrying before being attacked. Her own duffel had been torn apart by walkers as they were fleeing the store, so she was thankful that she at least had some supplies left. She tried not to think about how much easier it would be to ration supplies with only herself to worry about.

How could she already be thinking that way? It had only been five minutes since Karen had died. Was she that far gone?

Ruth shook her head as she continued up the street. It was shock. She had done the unthinkable when shooting Karen and was now fleeing for her life. Again. It was understandable. She didn't need to worry about whether or not she was still sane or a good person right now, she needed to find some place safe first. She wasn't thinking clearly and that was a risk while she was out the open.

Swinging the duffel onto her back so that she had both arms through the straps, Ruth headed to the left, turning up a side street. Keeping the knife tightly in one hand, she didn't stop running until she was a good three blocks away from where Karen had been. She didn't see any walkers in her immediate vicinity so she slowed to a walk and worked to catch her breath. As she rounded another corner, she ducked to the ground as gun shots rang out and she scrambled to hide behind a dumpster.

A group of four people were running towards her, a crowd of walkers following close behind. It looked to be a group of around twenty with a dozen or so stranglers another two blocks down the street. These people were sprinting towards her, shooting over their shoulders to wean down the number of attackers behind them. Other survivors. People. She held her breath and watched.

One of the men had a cross-bow and the woman in the group had a fire axe that she was using to chop through walkers with ease. The other two men with them shot walkers with precision and if it wasn't for the overall force of so many walkers coming at once, Ruth thought that maybe these people could have survived. They moved together and stayed in formation, backing down the street as a cohesive unit. Bullets weren't being wasted when hand weapons could be used. No one missed a headshot if they did shoot, and no walker was left with its brains intact as they sprinted up the block. Still, there were only four of them and dozens of walkers. It looked like they were going to be overwhelmed if they didn't move quickly or if no one came to their aid.

In any other situation, if Karen had been there, if she hadn't just been abandoned by the last living person that she knew, Ruth would have run the other way. She would have turned and run, hoping that these fellow survivors hadn't seen her or which way she was going. She had done it before and would do it again, free of any guilt. It was survival of the fittest but also survival of the cautious.

Other people could get her killed, or worse, they could be the ones doing the killing. Adding unknown factors to an already unpredictable situation was something that only made matters worse. You didn't know anymore who the good people were. She and Karen had agreed. No one else, just them. They couldn't worry about anyone else if they were going to keep each other alive. No distractions.

Ruth watched as more walkers started to come out of surrounding streets and she knew that she had to make her choice fast. Hand tight on her rifle, she stood up from behind the dumpster, waving her other arm in the air. No one could be alone in this world.

* * *

Read and review.  
Peace.


	2. chapter two

**DOVE SEASON**  
chapter two

* * *

In the beginning it had been easy to trust people. Most people didn't even know what was going on, where had been affected, and how long it would take for the world's governments to take action. People had been glued to their televisions for almost 24 hours straight before all local news had stopped transmitting, leaving only a state-of- emergency alert on all stations.

Three hours after that the power went out. Soon people started to panic and pack up their homes. The mistake that many had made was taking the non-essentials with them when they left. People packed up their televisions and game consoles, opting to take things of monetary value rather than actual worth. Ruth had spotted a family on the interstate who had been towing their hot tub on a trailer behind their truck.

No one really thought to stock pile food, water, or gasoline. Those were commodities in the world before the outbreak, something that modern American society hadn't thought much of in the last fifty years. There was a McDonald's off of every freeway exit along with multiple gas stations. Why take things that you know that you can replace on the road?

Within two days the local interstates were blocked with bumper to bumper traffic. By the following week the people were gone but their cars remained. Car graveyards popped up all over the country overnight.

In the early days people didn't understand that everything was lost and because they still had hope, no one was really a threat. People had believed that the Wildfire outbreak was either a temporary threat or that all accounts had been wildly blown out of proportion. No one really believed that the world was ending, that was what paranoid people thought – people who believed in conspiracies, the overly religious who believed the Rapture had begun – you know, crazy people? Normal, sane people didn't think like that in the beginning.

No, most people thought that Monday morning they would be back at their desk, wishing that something exciting really had happened. That way of thinking kept most people docile in the beginning, it left them open to trust one another and act within civilized social norms. Sure, in some places it had been a blood bath and people were forced to change overnight, but most places people held on to their humanity for the first month.

After that, well, people started to lose hope. Once you realized that an entire thirty days has passed since the power had gone out, it was hard to imagine that the grids would ever be up again. They had kept track of the days by counting how many had passed since the power went out.

Thirty days in it was estimated that half of the country's population had been killed. It was hard to know how many walkers populated the country but Ruth had never been with a survivor group bigger than any walker horde she'd encountered. The walkers outnumbered the living only thirty days after the power grids went down.

Karen died on day 495.

* * *

Their reaction to her was instant, as was hers to the situation unfolding. They looked surprised to see someone join in their fight as Ruth didn't hesitate to leave the safety of the dumpster to start shooting. A muscular man with a cross-bow watched as she took out four walkers in quick succession before cut off the head another. She didn't hold back as she shot and hacked her way to the opposite side of the street where two of the other survivors were pinned down by a handful of walkers. With the three of them working quickly the walkers were soon lying still on the pavement.

"What are you doing?" Ruth yelled at one of them, a slim Asian man who had stopped running all-together and had turned back to deal with a half dozen walkers at once. He didn't seem to hear her or the other two men who were yelling at him to run. "We gotta go, fucking move!"

The woman with the axe came up beside Ruth, lobbing the head off a walker that had come up behind her. Looking down at the headless corpse before looking at the woman with wide eyes, Ruth nodded her thanks. Ten minutes in and she would have already been dead if it weren't for someone having her back. She had made the right choice in helping them.

"Glenn, let's go, man!" The man with the cross-bow had stopped to grab the other man, Glenn, and was dragging him by the back of his shirt away from the oncoming walkers. "We ain't got time for this shit!"

The man had a point. The group wasn't having issues holding the walkers off, it was that there were too many in total. A half dozen walkers on your own isn't a death sentence if you know your way around a knife and know to keep your distance. While the survivors had strength in numbers, the walkers just had solid numbers and more of them.

"We need to get back to the car," the woman yelled, hacking down another walker as she moved towards one of the others. She looked back the way that Ruth had come from only five minutes earlier. "If we circle back it shouldn't be difficult."

Ruth shook her head, taking aim at another walker heading towards them. "I just came from that way," she shared, killing the walker as she looked at the others. "Three blocks down and you're going to have the same problem."

_Three blocks down and you'll find my dead sister_, is what she should have said. She didn't know what else to say to convince them that going back that way was not an option. Luckily, none of them questioned her advice and they had already moved on to other routes. Apparently they had a camp that they needed to get back to and a car waiting a few blocks away for transportation.

Ruth didn't hesitate the follow after the group and kept pace as they kept moving down the block. She didn't understand where all the walkers had come from. They had been camped in the small town for almost a week and hadn't run into nearly this many walkers previously. She wondered if maybe Karen had been right and this town happened to be on the walkers' migratory path.

A handful of walkers broke through a window on their left and Ruth couldn't help but scream in surprise as one managed to catch her by the elbow as she ran past. She fell to the ground at an angle, missing the soft cushion of the duffel on her back and landed on the pavement hard. Her knife flew from her hand when she landed, skidding to a stop a few feet away from her. The walker latched onto her arm and pulled it with such force that for a second she thought her shoulder had been dislocated.

Not feeling the broken glass cutting through its stomach, the walker leaned out of the window snarling as it dragged her across the pavement on her side. Her vision went black for a split second as the pain washed over her but she didn't have time to deal with it as she realized the severity of her situation. Karen wasn't there to save her this time and everyone else was busy with their own walker issues.

_No one's got your back anymore, idiot_.

Kicking her leg out with another scream, Ruth managed to kick off the building with enough force to rip the walker's arm off. It fell to the sidewalk with a wet splat but the walker didn't seem to mind being one armed. His remaining hand gripped the broken window frame, stabbing through his palms and soaking the frame with blood as he tried to climb out of the building.

Before she had a chance to get to her feet, another walker grabbed her from behind, dragging her away from the broken window and the walker that was trying to replace his arm with her own. Scrambling to get her footing back, she flailed away from the walker behind her and attempted to stab behind her with her knife.

A hand caught her swinging arm, using her momentum to pull her onto her feet. She swung around with a fist as she tried to catch her balance and saw that it wasn't another walker attached to her arm, but rather was the man with the cross-bow. He raised an eye-brow at her before letting go of her arm and shooting a walker that was coming up behind them.

"You good?" He sounded genuinely concerned which was confusing to Ruth. She didn't know this man, he didn't know her. The only thing that they knew to have in common was that they were both survivors. Maybe for this group that was enough for them. It wasn't enough for her but she couldn't deny that the man had most likely saved her life.

She nodded her head, bending at the waist to catch her breath and gave him a thumbs up with one hand. "Thanks," she said gratefully.

He nodded before running to catch up with the others, looking over his shoulder to make sure that she was following. Walking over to the walker caught in the broken window, Ruth brought her knife down on its skull before moving to follow him. Soon they were all running down the street and away from the remaining walkers.

The woman led the group around another corner before sharply turning down the next side street. Ruth realized that she was leading them in a giant circle around the area they had just been and where Ruth had told them more walkers were. She was leading them in the direction of the store that she and Karen had been fleeing and she wondered if this group had run into the same problem that they had earlier in the day.

She hoped that they hadn't but as the Big Spot! came into view, she realized with a sinking feeling she had been right. A green SUV sat in front the store, bags of supplies dumped on the ground all around. One of the men tossed the axe-wielding woman a set of keys as they all made easy work of the half dozen walkers standing by the vehicle.

When she and Karen had stormed the store they had only made it halfway through the aisles before they were overwhelmed and forced to leave. It looked like the following group had made their raid after most of the walkers had stumbled off after the Collins sisters. The two groups had missed each other by fifteen minutes at most. She couldn't help but wish that they had shown up sooner.

Looking at the other end of the block she could see the headlights of Karen's Jeep poking out from around the corner. She thought about making a run for it but remembered dismally that she didn't have the keys. Her chances of hot wiring the Jeep before either these people or walkers got to her were low and she didn't want to take the risk. Besides, if she ran into any problems it was good to know that the Jeep would be waiting for her. It didn't have much in the way of supplies but a ride was a ride.

"Get in," the woman ordered, giving Ruth little time to protest before she was pushed into the SUV and the woman closed the door behind her. Suddenly feeling uneasy about her situation, Ruth clutched her knife with a tight grip. The woman climbed into the driver's seat and threw the car into drive, barely closing her own door before taking off down the street.

The air was heavy as everyone sank into their seats, watching as the streets passed by their windows. Ruth didn't look back as the Big Spot! disappeared from view and instead focused on where they were headed. The woman was driving them in the opposite direction that she and Karen had come into town, and she didn't have any knowledge of what was that direction. There were maps in her duffel, she had only grabbed them off a magazine rack half an hour ago, but she didn't want to rummage through her bag and draw attention to herself.

She was glad to not be the center of attention and to have a few moments to gather her thoughts. When she had woken up that morning, Ruth could never have imagined that today would have been the day that she lost Karen. You can't prepare yourself for that, not really.

She had always heard that you could feel in your heart whether or not a person was dead. People always said that when loved ones went missing. Their wife wasn't dead because_ he would know, he would be able to _feel it_ if she was truly dead. You just didn't understand_. Ruth had thought that it was something that people told themselves to feel better – denial of what was more likely to have happened. But now, now it was something that made Ruth feel worse because she couldn't say something like that without lying to herself.

Karen was dead. She felt dead because she was dead. There wasn't anything more to it. She had put a bullet through her sister's head half an hour earlier. She knew that Karen was dead because she was the one that had killed her. Ruth could feel the weight of her death heavy on her chest and didn't think that it would ever go away.

She looked at the other occupants of the vehicle, wondering what their day had been like up until the moment she had seen them running for their lives. There was a subdued air about them all that made her nervous, still. Her knuckles were white from holding her knife so tightly. Feeling the way that she did, she prayed that their day had been free of loss. She had suffered enough for all of them.

The others didn't seem to notice her presence though, all too caught up in their own thoughts to be sparing any for her. About twenty minutes into their drive, the woman driving pulled the car to a stop on the side of the road and Ruth tensed as she saw the two front passengers exchanging glances. They looked back at her at the same time, doing nothing to calm her nerves.

She had heard stories from others on the road. Trust no one. These people had done alright by her thus far, but still.

"Are you alone?" the man in the front seat asked finally, breaking the silence.

He said it so quietly that Ruth wasn't even sure that he had spoken. Was this some sort of trauma-induced hallucination? She let her head fall quickly against the car window, wincing when it caused her pain. No, this was real. These people were real and they were looking for answers.

She couldn't see the point in lying to them, no one was left to have her back or to save her if these people meant her any harm. There was no one else anymore, only her. She didn't have anything left to lose. It was almost a relief until Karen's face flashed before her eyes and all she felt was guilt.

She nodded to the man, choosing to not meet his eyes. He was looking at her too intently. "It's just me now," she said. The words sounded foreign to her because she had never had to say them before. She had never felt more alone and vulnerable in her entire life.

The group looked at each other again before the man looked to the woman driving. She nodded her head in silent agreement before clearing her throat and turning in her seat to better face Ruth.

"We have a camp," she said, motioning to the others in the car. "It used to be a prison, but now it's our home. We've got a pretty nice set-up there and plenty of spare beds and work to go around," she continued. Ruth wasn't entirely sure of what she was hearing. It had been a long day. The woman didn't seem to notice and looked at her earnestly. "Is that something that you would be interested in being a part of?"

Was it? Her only reason for avoiding other survivors was lying dead on a sidewalk twenty miles away. Like she'd said, it was only her now.

Ruth looked out the window and frowned when she saw three walkers coming through the tree line towards the car. She wasn't threatened by their presence, they were still a good distance from the car and couldn't do much if they kept the doors locked. It was just annoying that they were there, another reminder that they were never truly safe. That was what she had forgotten before and she couldn't be caught forgetting it again.

She wouldn't last long on her own, she understood that. It wasn't because she couldn't fend for herself, it was that she didn't want to. Karen had been the only face that she had seen every day for the last sixteen months. No one else had been with her from the start and no one else ever would be. Karen was who she had started this journey with her all those nights ago, and Ruth had been the one to see Karen to the end of her own journey.

But she couldn't do it alone, not now, not yet. One day, maybe. But less than an hour after losing someone who had become a part of herself? No, she couldn't do it. She wouldn't last a week alone and she couldn't risk trying.

She found herself nodding to the woman and meeting her gaze. "I think that I would. What do I need to do?"

There was always a catch and as Ruth heard the man in the front seat start to talk again, she wasn't surprised. Everybody needed something. "Just gotta ask you three questions and then we'll take you back with us, let you meet our people," he said. Three questions didn't sound impossible. "That sound like a fair deal to you?"

She nodded.

"Alright then, how many walkers have you killed?"

A simple enough question. She had to think about it and didn't know how to honestly respond. It had been 495 days since the outbreak and she had killed her first walker shortly after waking up on the first. She'd gone out to pee in the woods and had encountered her first walker while returning to the Jeep. Karen had found her sobbing on the ground holding a bloody flashlight, dead walker a few feet away.

The sisters had needed to kill a few more walkers and drive another hundred miles before they were finally willing to accept what was happening. That had been over a year ago and Ruth had never tried to keep track of the number that she had killed. Keeping count made her give it too much thought and they didn't deserve that. Walkers weren't people anymore and she couldn't mourn them like they were so why waste the energy.

She realized that she was taking too long to answer when she saw them all looking at her uneasily. "Hundreds?" she guessed honestly with a shrug. "Never really wanted to keep score."

It didn't seem unlikely over 498 days, especially in recent days where you had to cut through a dozen walkers to get a day's worth of supplies. Karen had thought that the herds were migrating, taking an instinctual approach to their hunting, but Ruth had never been convinced. Walkers weren't animals, they were dead. They didn't even know what they were doing half the time.

They didn't seem phased by her answer, making her realize that these people were having just a rough a time as she was. They were not untouched by the world around them. Earlier she had been impressed by the way they had taken the offensive against the walkers, now she understood why. These people had gotten good at surviving.

"How many people have you killed?" The woman driving at been the one to ask but they all tensed, waiting for her answer. The question made her lungs deflate too quickly.

How could they ask her that?

_Ian._

_Marcus._

_Shannon._

Did they not live in the same world as she did?

_Anthony._

_Jill._

_Karen._

There were more and she was sure that there were more to come, but even still, their faces flashed before her and she clenched her eyes shut for a moment, willing them to go away. She knew that there was nothing to feel guilty about, she had saved those people each from a terrible fate, but she couldn't make the feeling go away.

Opening her eyes and feeling a tear falling down her check, Ruth quickly rubbed her sleeve across her face and coughed, clearing her throat. They were waiting for her answer and she owed them an honest one.

"Eight," she said finally. The man in the front looked surprised by her answer but didn't say anything. She wondered how many people he had killed, how many any of them had killed. No one had clean hands anymore, they were no different. She could see that in them already.

The Asian man sitting beside her asked the last question, surprising her. She had assumed the two in the front seat were the ones with any power. She was wrong apparently. "Why?"

The question confused her but Ruth was starting to understand why they had asked those three specific questions. To put it frankly, they were trying to figure out whether or not she was a threat. They were just as afraid of her as she was of them. They didn't trust her but they seemed willing to, so long as she answered their questions with reasonable answers. When they asked her why, they wanted to know if she was the kind of person to mindlessly slaughter them in their sleep. It was a small reassurance to know that if they were worried about her, she probably didn't need to worry about them.

_It must be some camp_, she thought.

"I had promises to keep," she answered, looking back out the window as she loosened her grip on the knife. She looked back to see them all staring at her, waiting for her to elaborate. It wasn't a good enough answer. Ruth sighed. "You know what I mean," she insisted. "Look around you, the world's gone to shit. Those of us left have a promise to keep to one another. You put down the ones you know," she said softly. She had almost said the ones you _love_ but had stopped herself. "The ones that you can."

She hadn't loved Marcus or Anthony or particularly liked any of the others, but she had done what needed to be done and put them down when it was time. Any decent person would do it. Love had nothing to do with it anymore. It was mercy more than anything.

"Ain't that the fucking truth," the man in the front seat muttered as the woman in the front seat nodded in agreement. The air seemed less tense as the group exchanged another look.

The woman gave Ruth a small smile before reaching out a hand to her. "I'm Sasha," she said as Ruth shook her hand. She motioned to the man beside her, introducing him as well. "That's Daryl," she said before pointing to the two men in the backseat with Ruth. "And that's David and Glenn."

All three men nodded to her, each offering a small reassuring smile. Her turn. She had passed their test. Ruth felt herself relax slightly and took a deep breath. These people didn't seem any more of a threat to her than she was to them. She didn't trust them, of course not, but she felt herself willing to give them a chance.

"I'm Ruth," she said, giving them all a short smile that she hoped didn't appear too tight. "Ruth Collins."

Now that her mind was in a less panicked state, she noticed that all of them appeared to be fairly clean and she wondered if there was somewhere to take a shower at their camp. She thought about asking but didn't want to push her luck. Daryl had mentioned others that she would need to meet before being officially welcomed into their group. She couldn't start counting her chickens yet.

Feeling safe enough to put her knife back in its sheath in her boot, she moved her duffel around with her feet so that the zipper was on the top, and unzipped it. Pulling out a box of granola bars, she offered one to both Glenn and David before sticking her hand towards the front seat, two bars in hand for Daryl and Sasha. Both took the snacks, Sasha giving her a wide grin before ripping open the wrapper and shoving it into her mouth as she put the car back into drive.

Daryl gave her a small nod of gratitude and took a bite of his, turning back to face the road. He stuck his boots up onto the car's dashboard as while turning on the stereo. With a wave of his hand towards the road, he shoved the rest of the granola bar in his mouth.

"Home, Jeeves," he ordered roughly, talking through the half eaten food in his mouth. Sasha laughed but didn't argue as she pulled back onto the road. Music played lightly over the speakers.

Ruth watched as the three walkers that had been stumbling down the hill side towards them reached the SUV just as they drove away. Their arms stretched towards the car as it sped off, leaving the walkers behind in a cloud of dust and dead leaves.

* * *

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Peace.


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